Netflix’s voracious demand for padded seasons and spin-offs comes face to face with a fantastic piece of fantasy television

This contains light spoilers for season 2 and the books up to Blood of Elves

Well, this was certainly a season of The Witcher by the popular streaming platform Netflix. I’m going to look at this from the point of view of someone who is almost finished with the books and who played all the games.

First of all, the show addresses most, if not all, of the concerns I had from season 1. Establishing shots are no longer static drab pictures, but are now extremely detailed and dynamic. Cintra, Kaer Morhen and other places really feel real to me now. The show also refined the its color pallete down further - it’s dark and gloomy when it needs to be, but also very colorful at times. This is a big improvement. Finally, the oddly off-putting visual styles of season 1 were either reversed or justified: the ballsack armor is now a thing of the past; Aretuza’s weird scifi-esque geometrical design actually matches with the architecture of the Elven ruins; the CGI is vastly improved, having beautifully grotesque monsters in plain daylight; and all those weird monoliths that you could spot at times ended up having dramatic story consequences, which I very much appreciate. And the show now follows a linear story structure, which was to be expected, but is still welcome (see P.S.).

With those out of the way, let’s see how this season compares to the book it’s adapting, Blood of Elves. At a very high level, I could say all the story beats of the book were present on screen, all the way down to niche secondary characters that could have easily been cut (e.g., Lydia, Jarre, the Michelet brothers, etc). The issue, if you can call it that, is that the story beats from Blood of Elves only really comprise roughly a third of the season, as they are mixed in with entirely new content. I can discuss this further, but I’d need to talk a lot about spoilers. Let’s just say that they’re trying to a) follow the book, b) create Game of Thrones-level political drama with this setting, and c) unashamedly setup their prequel series. It’s a lot for 8 episodes, and it’s definitely a very mixed bag. And maybe the worst part of this is that all of this extra material isn’t there just to support the side characters; it also quite extensively involves our main trio.

As a small note, I also find it funny how the first episode is still an adaptation of one of the short stories in the first book, much like season 1; except that this time it is adapted to also include Ciri. The short stories are where the Witcher is at its best, in my opinion, and that comes through in the episode. Its conclusion is one of those beautifully twisted twists that made the series stand out back in its heyday.

Getting now to the characters themselves (and their performances), I am happy to see that some who were established almost offhandedly in the previous season are having more screen time - a good side-effect of the padding, I guess. Cahir, in particular, seemed awfully mischaracterized in the previous season, but we’re digging deeper into him now. He only became an important character later on in the books, so it’s paramount for us to see how he goes from the season 1 sadist we know to whoever he needs to be further down the line. Some new important characters were also introduced, and they’re wonderfully cast for the most part. I particularly salute Vesemir and Rience. The latter, in particular, runs circles around his book counterpart. Triss also stepped up her performance after her anemic season 1 debut.

To conclude, I think the season is overall successful, but I also think they went really, really overboard at times. I seriously worry that the show will end up taking more seasons than it needs to if they keep padding the books with more and more original material. The Witcher’s political drama was always a backdrop to the character’s own personal journeys, and seeing them double down on the political side is maybe a misstep. It was alright in this season, as it helped showing just how many people want to get hold of Ciri, but I worry that this might become a poor habit for the rest of the series. They need to focus.

P.S.: The guy complaining about the non-linear story structure was 100% a callback to season 1 and also the funniest shit I’ve watched all week